This American Life retracts Apple Mike Daisey China show

The makers of an influential US radio show have retracted a programme critical of working conditions in a Chinese factory making Apple devices.

This American Life made headlines when a January edition broadcast extracts of performer Mike Daisey's account of a visit to the plant.

The Chicago-based producers now say they have learned that Daisey's monologue included fabrications.

It said he had made up meeting interviewees who "had been poisoned".

The episode, entitled Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory, was distributed by Public Radio International and broadcast nationwide. It later became This American Life's most popular podcast. It hit 888,000 downloads and was streamed 206,000 times.

The broadcast was followed by a series of articles in the New York Times looking at Apple's working practices and production methods.

Facing increased scrutiny, the firm later announced that it would allow third-party audits at its factories and release a list of its suppliers.

Wrong city

In a press release,This American Life saidthat when asked, Mike Daisey's Chinese interpreter had disputed one of the show's most dramatic moments - Mr Daisey's claim to have met underage workers employed by Foxconn, a key Apple manufacturer.

The release also said Cathy Lee, the interpreter, had called into doubt an account of a meeting with a man who had been badly injured while making iPads.

It said Mr Daisey had described letting the man "stroke" the tablet's screen "with his ruined hand" prompting the worker to remark: "It's a kind of magic."

But it said that when questioned, Ms Lee had said "nothing of the sort occurred".

This American Life said the facts had emerged when a reporter from another public radio production - American Public Media's Marketplace - became suspicious.

"In his monologue he [Daisey] claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane," This American Life said.

While Apple's supplier audits show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, in fact that factory was not in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.